Moving – Stilling – Repeating – that is the simple recipe for motility of the most basic cellular forms that started life on earth. Much of my earlier life was impacted by moving schools, cities, neighbourhoods, companies, sectors and communities. Only in the last 3 decades have I enjoyed the stability of living [...]

by Guest Blogger, Graeme Taylor Graeme writes: At this time, most climate researchers are only using a limited range of futures approaches: for example, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) future scenarios have been developed primarily with empirical predictive methods that extrapolate trends. These seriously underestimate the risk of nonlinear developments and critical failures. This article [...]

by Guest Blogger Elisabet Sahtouris, PhD evolution biologist and futurist, Advisor to Integral City. Elisabet notes the visual similarities of naturally evolved biological cells and cities with long histories, and makes an actual comparison of the two as complex adaptive living entities in evolution. She concludes that cities have greater evolutionary potential for leading us into [...]

Professor of Cities, Richard Florida has reconsidered the consequences of cities pursuing the creative class as a desirable strategy for their success (subject of his book The Rise of the Creative Class). In his new book The New Urban Crisis: How our Cities are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class – [...]

Guest Blogger: Beth Sanders My two teenagers and I just had a wonderful 7263km trip across Canada (and northern USA) to Toronto and back to Edmonton. My daughter is super excited about being in her new city of Toronto where she is entering first year university. My son [who was our fearless navigator] [...]

The 12 Intelligences of the Integral City can be directly connected to the Principles of Living Systems. This may not be surprising given the core influences of their creators. In the case of the 12 Intelligences, I was considering the evolution of the holarchy of human systems from individual, to family/collectives, to organizations, to [...]

After reading Scale by Geoffrey West, I am deeply impressed by his research, even though it appears that I have some fundamental disagreement with some of his conclusions. West argues for a framework of scaling cities (and other complex adaptive systems) that includes four core properties. His treatise is to my sensibilities so [...]

Finally, a book on the science of cities!! Geoffrey West’s Scale explains the universal laws that govern cities and how growth, innovation, sustainability, companies and economies contribute to the patterns of city dynamics. Every couple of years a new book is published that corroborates key tenets that Integral City has framed for cities [...]

With a process and a project like Imagine Durant, collective impact calls forth civic engagement in the present. But it also calls for a picture of a longer-term impact. The Integral City Book 1 is dedicated to the 7th generation from now – a horizon line adapted from the First Nations peoples who invoke [...]